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Comment by lkbm | Hacker News Reader

I've just assumed Germany is working towards electrification for heating. From a cursory search, this appears to be both de-facto the case[0] and an official policy goal[1].

I agree this should be explicitly mentioned when talking about renewable electricity generation targets, but the good news is that it is being addressed. (I mostly looked at heating, but I'm sure industry is also a huge portion. Presumably that's also being worked on.)

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/heat-make-german-buildi...

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-launch-emergenc...

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Additional anecdata, my landlord will replace the old oil-based boiler with a gas-powered one in ~ two months. Gas is sadly not dead, even in "new" installs. :D

(And jacks the rent up 30 euros per month because of it, while the "official" estimated monthly savings on the heating bill are 0.1 cent (yes, cent, not euros) per month per m², probably negative now, amazing ^^')

Ask for a heat pump

Are we neighbors? My landlord has the same plan.

I dunno about de-facto, my anecdata is my heating is in the process switching from L-Gas to H-Gas, have not heard any mention of replacing gas in the near future for existing properties

Wonder what the stats are for new builds being with gas heating vs without

Am not optimistic about German electricity handling the switching of heating and transport (cars) on top of existing usage+growth as long as we're antinuke (:

Yeah, its pretty unrealistic to imagine any zero-Carbon approach which excludes nuclear. But the greens would rather cover their eye/hears about that, and imagine that it can all be done with wind and solar (in northern europe of all places).

It’s certainly possible, just very very expensive due to capacity factors and storage. Like ‘multiples of GDP’ expensive depending on the napkin math used.

Is the carbon footprint being taken into account regarding batteries, windmill blades, and solar panels? These are all very expensive consumables, with no good way to reuse or recycle. Specifically the windmill blades and solar panels.

How does nuclear help with heating homes? The last time I checked we put nuclear plants far away from people, not use them for district heating.

Ever hear of electric heating? How on earth would you expect solar or wind to be used for heating. It's far from the cheapest option currently, but you're not getting rid of fossil fuels without electric heat.

Northern Europe has a lot of offshore wind capacity.

Electric heating and transport both help introduce renewables faster as they are both effectively storage. EVs are literally batteries that can charge off peak and electric heat pumps can work near continously to store heat in the building fabric and pause when demand is high.

Good insulation is another super boring technology that really helps too.

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